Jerry Swanson served as choral director at Forest View High School in Arlington Heights, Ill., from 1971 until the school closed in 1986, then at Elk Grove High School until he retired in 2002. He returns to the podium in November to lead generations of his former students in a performance that will be part-reunion, part-thanksgiving.
As a music educator, his choral groups sang with the Chicago Symphony, performed all over the northwest suburbs, and toured Europe every few years, according to today’s Daily Herald. Students who sang under his direction number over 2,000, including Steven Collella, the current choir director at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, and Chris Buti, the current band director at Rolling Meadows High School.
When alumni “ambushed” him, during a performance at his church, about the idea of a reunion concert, he didn’t raise any objections. “I was thrilled. I was flattered. I love rehearsing and being with people who are excited about music,” the Daily Herald quoted him as saying. His former students have been rehearsing every month through the summer in preparation for the concert.
Notes of Thanks, a concert that pays tribute to a retired choir director by bringing together generations of his students, will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, in the field house of the Forest View Educational Center, 2121 Goebbert Road, Arlington Heights, Ill. Tickets are on sale at the box office: $7 in advance, $10 at the door. Kids under 13 get in free. Proceeds benefit the District 214 Community Education Foundation.
Why do music teachers have such a big influence on our lives?
Subtitle: The exceedingly poor quality of music advocacy research
Research out of Virginia Tech, published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, tells us that students tend to pursue careers in music if they are motivated—through attainment value, intrinsic interest value, and expectancy—to pursue careers in music. A student’s tendency to pursue a career in music performance, as opposed to education, has something to do with his perception of his own ability, as well as the motivational factors described. That’ll be the last issue I buy of that journal!
So, what we can glean from this research is that music teachers who provide good role models of these motivational values, therefore, can be expected to have many of their students pursue careers in either music performance or music education. Not exactly ground-breaking research!
I have been holding my head in my hands for years about this kind of blind advocacy. Mr Swanson’s former students didn’t ask him to return for a reunion concert because he motivated them to pursue careers in music—most of them, anyway. And research like this completely misses the boat about the value of music education or the value of music educators to our lives. I wish journals that were once respected had gotten that message a long time ago, but I was apparently overly optimistic.
For most of us who actually care about music education, rather than the publication of a nonsensical study, music itself becomes intertwined into the web of our lives in many ways other than pursuing a professional career in music. We listen to music on the way into work, in elevators as we make our way to our office, in restaurants as we eat, in our ringtones, and so on. We attend concerts, sing hymns in a church, play with infants and toddlers, and engage in a wide variety of musical activities according to our specific interests.
Other research isn’t much better—and much of it has polluted our collective understanding with a not-so-veiled agenda—including a recent study that tried to sell us on the idea that music helps us learn math or English or some other core subject. An experiment last year looked at Title I students in California and found that those who participated in music activities during school showed a “dramatically higher proficiency rate” on the California Standards Test (CST) and California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) than Title I students not participating in music.
Biased studies like this, which purport to promote music education, do nothing of the sort. They’re usually a complete insult to music, to education of math and reading, to teachers, and to scientific research. Music is a vehicle that connects students with school, causing them to engage in school activities, which often include (I hope) learning in math, reading, science, social studies, and so on.
In the sense of connecting kids with school, you might as well just substitute the term “crime-scene camp,” “summit with small animals,” or “beauty pageant” in place of “music.” It would mean the same thing: engage kids in school activities, and they will learn.
One difference between music and math teachers
All of these advocacy studies combined don’t even begin to address what Mr Swanson and his students have known for several decades: that music teachers give us the quality of self-worth and teach us the very important skill of collaboration.
Just as the pianist in the performance of a concerto has to work with the conductor, who has to work with the orchestra, whose management has to work with the soloist’s agent and the box office, and so on and so on, learners must work with their teachers and, probably, other students, teachers must work with school administrators, who must work with district administrators, and so on. And that doesn’t even address the parents looking over everyone’s shoulder.
Music teachers, more than anyone else in our education history, make us competent in important skills, like collaboration, and that’s why we’re much more likely to approach a former choir director to direct a tribute concert than a math teacher to give a guest lecture on trig identities.
Knowing something like a trig identity is very important, of course, especially if you’re an engineer designing aircraft engines, for example. But music is doing. Hearing the result of our hard work on a piece of music is much more lasting in our memories than using trigonometry to put together an engine. You might not save lives with music, but you will bring joy to many people’s day, including your own.